The international team, lead by well-known Russian urbanist Andrey Chernikhov, and including McAdam Architects, Tower 151, Georgi Stanishev and Ginsburg Architects placed first in round two of the Moscow City Agglomeration Development Concept competition. The winning consortium sparked debate by suggesting Moscow officials should consider redeveloping the abundant brown field sites and other available infill spaces within the existing city boundaries before proposing new development. They highlighted vast areas occupied by goods railways and disused industrial sites from Soviet times as prime areas for regeneration and expansion, as well as a re-thinking of transport networks to alleviate pressure on existing systems.

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McAdam Architects team beat out nine other teams. All of them presented their first edition of concepts for the city agglomeration development, including the existing city and the new south-west sector of the agglomeration, on June 22.

OMA received second, after placing first in round one of the competition – which required teams to present a detailed analysis of the complex issues involved when doubling the size of Moscow.

Although this is set up to be a competition with “winners”, James McAdam feels otherwise. He stressed to bdonline that “there’s a very open exchange of information between teams” and feels “more like a consultation than a competition.”

McAdam stated, “The process is evolving into a fascinating discourse on how a major capital can tackle the problems of expansion and regeneration on a vast scale. As a consultation procedure the range of ideas being suggested are incredibly diverse and could be pooled as a powerful medium for Moscow’s future.”

The nine teams now have two months to prepare master plan concepts. They will present their ideas to a jury of international experts at the end of August.

In 2011, the Russian Federation Council confirmed that the city of Moscow will annex 150,000 hectares to the southwest in order to overcome its chronic space problems, making Moscow 2.4 times larger than its current size. The expansion is designed to relieve pressure on the over-populated, historic city center by redistributing the working places to the annexed part of the Moscow Oblast, thus addressing transport, ecological and social issues that result from high levels of commuting. Find more information on the competition here on ArchDaily.